HIV and CONDOMS
APRIL 2013
Lisa Maki
What is more Biblical: To teach young people to use condoms so they won’t get HIV or to teach them about Jesus, the Word, and sin and its consequences?
I would like to believe that as Christians you would choose the latter one; but lately I realized that there are Christians who would rather promote the use of condoms than the healing of Jesus. This surely stirred me up and is the reason why I was prompted to write this article.
What a lot of people, and this includes Christians, fail to realize is that every evil thing happening around us is the result of our disobedience to God. Every crime ... every unwanted and unexpected death ... every sickness ... poverty ... calamities – all these are consequences not only of the fall of man but his continued disobedience.
The fall of man brought forth sin and the distortion of God’s perfect creation. Yet God offered a solution through Jesus Christ. Through our acceptance of His death and resurrection, and surrender to Him and His Word, we can be delivered from the bondages of sin and death. We can be freed and healed from all kinds of diseases and problems.
In Deuteronomy 28 God laid down the blessings for obeying Him and curses for disobeying Him. The blessings include the “fruit of your body”, which means your children. This means that you will have healthy and blessed children. So whatever sicknesses you may have, including HIV, once you surrender your life to Jesus, repent from your sins, and obey His Word, then you have the access to healing. Why else will God say that He will bless the fruit of your body if you will just be passing on your sickness to your children?
I would like to believe that as Christians you would choose the latter one; but lately I realized that there are Christians who would rather promote the use of condoms than the healing of Jesus. This surely stirred me up and is the reason why I was prompted to write this article.
What a lot of people, and this includes Christians, fail to realize is that every evil thing happening around us is the result of our disobedience to God. Every crime ... every unwanted and unexpected death ... every sickness ... poverty ... calamities – all these are consequences not only of the fall of man but his continued disobedience.
The fall of man brought forth sin and the distortion of God’s perfect creation. Yet God offered a solution through Jesus Christ. Through our acceptance of His death and resurrection, and surrender to Him and His Word, we can be delivered from the bondages of sin and death. We can be freed and healed from all kinds of diseases and problems.
In Deuteronomy 28 God laid down the blessings for obeying Him and curses for disobeying Him. The blessings include the “fruit of your body”, which means your children. This means that you will have healthy and blessed children. So whatever sicknesses you may have, including HIV, once you surrender your life to Jesus, repent from your sins, and obey His Word, then you have the access to healing. Why else will God say that He will bless the fruit of your body if you will just be passing on your sickness to your children?
This is my point. Why tell a person to use condoms to protect himself/herself from HIV if you can tell him/her that surrendering to Jesus and obedience to God’s Word will protect him/her from any disease? And even if the person already has HIV, then you can tell him that there is healing in Jesus.
Let’s not beat around the bush here. Fornication (sex outside of marriage) is a sin. God designed sex for marriage and only for marriage. Any violation and distortion of the way God created sex will surely bring about consequences. HIV is a consequence of sin. It is as simple as that. This is one of the curses that God talked about in Deuteronomy 28:20, 22 ...
The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me.
The Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever ...
This sounds like some HIV symptoms to me. And it is the consequence of disobedience.
The great thing about our God is that He forgives and offers redemption. He can reverse the consequence of your sin. He can turn your curse to a blessing. All these He can do if you turn away from sin, surrender to Him, and follow His ways.
This is what we should teach people instead of telling them to use condoms for protection. In the first place, a young person who decides to follow the Lord and keep himself sexually pure until marriage will have no need for condoms. Of course there is a possibility that his future wife is not a virgin. But if she is saved and seriously following God, then she has been cleansed.
I am a living witness to this. My husband and I were not virgins when we got married. We’ve lived highly sexual lives in the past, before we got saved. We both got tested and both of us were diagnosed “free from HIV”. My husband keeps saying: “It’s only by the grace of God that I didn’t even get a disease”. He was very promiscuous and was a heavy drug user.
It is still wise to have yourself checked of HIV if you’ve had multiple sex partners in the past, before you got saved and reborn. There is nothing wrong with this. And if you are diagnosed with HIV, then rest assured that God can heal you if you are seriously following Him. If you decide to get married and you have HIV, then you better inform your “spouse-to-be”. And if you get married, then I will definitely advice that you use condoms.
My whole point is not about “not using condoms” but to point people to the Truth instead of pointing them to condoms. If I teach my 16-year old son to use condoms, it’s short of telling him that it’s okay to have sex before marriage. I may be able to protect him from HIV but not from the consequences of sin. However, if I teach him the Word of God, the rewards of obedience and the consequences of disobedience, then I don’t just save him from HIV but from the penalties of sin. His knowledge and understanding of the Word will make him wise to avoid sin, and therefore avoid having HIV.
A physical symptom may require a physical solution but the Bible clearly says that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12).
Open your eyes Christians. We are facing a spiritual war! And we can’t win a spiritual war by using physical weapons. HIV may be a physical sickness but it was brought into this world by the forces of evil, as a consequence of sin. The only way we can win these evil forces is to put on the whole armor of God and not a condom.
If you truly care about people and you want to protect them from HIV, then preach the Gospel. Lead them to Jesus. Tell them the Truth. Warn them of sin and its consequences. This is your role as a Christian. If you don’t do this, their blood is in your hands.
The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me.
The Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever ...
This sounds like some HIV symptoms to me. And it is the consequence of disobedience.
The great thing about our God is that He forgives and offers redemption. He can reverse the consequence of your sin. He can turn your curse to a blessing. All these He can do if you turn away from sin, surrender to Him, and follow His ways.
This is what we should teach people instead of telling them to use condoms for protection. In the first place, a young person who decides to follow the Lord and keep himself sexually pure until marriage will have no need for condoms. Of course there is a possibility that his future wife is not a virgin. But if she is saved and seriously following God, then she has been cleansed.
I am a living witness to this. My husband and I were not virgins when we got married. We’ve lived highly sexual lives in the past, before we got saved. We both got tested and both of us were diagnosed “free from HIV”. My husband keeps saying: “It’s only by the grace of God that I didn’t even get a disease”. He was very promiscuous and was a heavy drug user.
It is still wise to have yourself checked of HIV if you’ve had multiple sex partners in the past, before you got saved and reborn. There is nothing wrong with this. And if you are diagnosed with HIV, then rest assured that God can heal you if you are seriously following Him. If you decide to get married and you have HIV, then you better inform your “spouse-to-be”. And if you get married, then I will definitely advice that you use condoms.
My whole point is not about “not using condoms” but to point people to the Truth instead of pointing them to condoms. If I teach my 16-year old son to use condoms, it’s short of telling him that it’s okay to have sex before marriage. I may be able to protect him from HIV but not from the consequences of sin. However, if I teach him the Word of God, the rewards of obedience and the consequences of disobedience, then I don’t just save him from HIV but from the penalties of sin. His knowledge and understanding of the Word will make him wise to avoid sin, and therefore avoid having HIV.
A physical symptom may require a physical solution but the Bible clearly says that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12).
Open your eyes Christians. We are facing a spiritual war! And we can’t win a spiritual war by using physical weapons. HIV may be a physical sickness but it was brought into this world by the forces of evil, as a consequence of sin. The only way we can win these evil forces is to put on the whole armor of God and not a condom.
If you truly care about people and you want to protect them from HIV, then preach the Gospel. Lead them to Jesus. Tell them the Truth. Warn them of sin and its consequences. This is your role as a Christian. If you don’t do this, their blood is in your hands.
Lisa Maki is the founder, publisher, and editor of God'z Gurlz. More about Lisa at ...
http://www.godzgurlz.com/regular-contributors.html
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